Burlap Christmas Banner Printable – 12 Days of Christmas {Day 8}

Before I show you the 8th project for my 12 Days of Christmas, I thought I’d share a little about my Thanksgiving. If there’s one thing that could be said about it, it was memorable. That’s good, right? Well – I’ll let you decide.

As I mentioned before, my husband’s parents came to spend Thanksgiving with us. As I’ve also mentioned before, I don’t like to cook. I do it out of necessity, but I’m much more relaxed with a paintbrush in my hand than I am with a cooking utensil, so I’m not sure what possessed me to invite them to travel 1,500 miles to eat a holiday meal with us…but I did, and they came.

I knew in order to pull it off, I’d need to be super organized, and I’d need to get as much done in advance, so I wouldn’t be totally crazy trying to get the meal on the table. The day before Thanksgiving, I got up early and started my preparations. I made deviled eggs, my daughter mixed up the pumpkin pies and made mandarin orange jello “fluff”, and I cooked the turkey and removed the meat from the bone. I planned to reheat it the next day, to save on oven space, since I still had a ham, plus multiple side dishes that would need to go in the oven on Thanksgiving day. Everything was going according to plan.

They arrived mid morning on Thanksgiving, and my mother-in-law joined me in the kitchen. I didn’t want her to have to work at my house, but my father-in-law doesn’t eat turkey or ham, so she made some salisbury steak for him, while I got my ham in the oven and started putting my side dishes together. My refrigerator was starting to fill up with dishes waiting to be heated or cooked, but things were going well. We even took a little break to go outside, so I could take a photo of my in-laws that they could include in their Christmas cards.

As the meal time got closer, I could feel myself getting a little more nervous, trying to time when everything went in the oven, so it would all be served hot. When the side dishes were almost finished cooking, I figured I’d better get the turkey heated up, and went to pull it out of the refrigerator. I had recently purchased a beautiful old ironstone platter, and was looking forward to arranging the meat on it.

The foil tray holding the turkey was underneath the bowl of mandarin orange “fluff”, and thought I could slide the foil container out from under the glass bowl, without taking everything else out of the fridge to do it. I was holding onto the bowl with one hand, and had the turkey container in the other hand, and the weight of the turkey caused the aluminum tray to bend. I could feel it start to fall, but I had the fluff bowl in the other hand, and there was nothing I could do…except watch my turkey fall to the floor…all 17 pounds of it.

The only thing that kept me from having a conniption, was the knowledge that the majority of my family prefers ham anyway, and my FIL had his salisbury steak, so it wasn’t as if our meal would be meatless. It would just be birdless.

All in all, I still consider it a success though. After all, I my kitchen was cleaner than it had been in weeks, since I’d cleared away all my crafting junk for their arrival. Most of the dishes I made tasted good, and my MIL salvaged about 5% of the turkey that had landed on the lower part inside the fridge (which thankfully, we had just cleaned), so she and I still had the turkey we wanted to eat.

I told her I thought maybe I’d come to her house next Thanksgiving though. After all, the old song says, “over the river and through the wood, to Grandmother’s house we go.”

Okay…enough of my fiascoes, and on to today’s project. It’s another quick and easy one!

I made the letters alternating red and green, and dressed up the bottom of the pennants with red and green accents as well. There are also 2 blank pennants you can use to add other letters. Just save the images you want, print and cut them out. The grain of the burlap fabric texture shows up so pretty in these printables.

Click the “download and print” button below to print.

{Click HERE to see all of the 12 Days of Christmas projects and printables – the link will be updated each day!}

Comments

OH your Thanksgiving was interesting…always good to have a backup meat dish! One year I turned on the wrong oven for the turkey on our double oven…good thing we had ham. This year we ended up with a very small group as one son and his family were travelling, and my daughter and her family had to stay home with stomach flu. You just never know how things will turn out for Thanksgiving…you have a good story to tell anyway!
The banner is very pretty!

I think you did pretty darn well considering you don’t like to cook! Not a cook here either and would never have thought about cooking the turkey ahead of time. I know it wasn’t funny, but I did giggle about the turkey. Can you imagine all the wild tales people could tell about what has happened to them? My son and I went and had Thanksgiving at a friend’s house with my brother. I’m sure your family appreciated all of your effort!
I’m new to your blog and am enjoying your 12 Days of Christmas! I love burlap too 🙂

Welcome, Debbie! The turkey on the floor wasn’t funny when it happened, but I can laugh about it now. My dogs have been enjoying little bites of what we picked up ever since, so they are enjoying the feast anyway!

Angie, it all sounds so familiar. Always remember its about being together not the food. It sounds like you had a wonderful meal despite your turkey accident. Years from now you will be glad you had the family together. Love your banner on the ironstone too!

I’ve had my share of Thanksgiving disasters too. One year my oven died when it was time to roast the turkey. Not to mention most of the side dishes were yet to be cooked. My Mom didn’t live too far away so I loaded up the whole dinner and cooked it at her house even though she was visiting her sister for Thanksgiving. Then loaded up all the cooked food to take back to my house. It is funny now but not so much at the time. sb

Well, sound like you had a ‘memorial’ Thanksgiving, but not the kind you wanted.
Glad a good time was had despite the disaster.
Love the banner … thanks for the time to make it and share it.
Hugs,
Audrey Z.

Kudos to you for preparing Thanksgiving dinner and having you in-laws join you. All’s well that ends well and it sounds like you had quite a feast despite the loss of most of your turkey. I almost lost our turkey as I took it out of the oven. It was in a deep roasting pan and that was on top of a cookie sheet, but a certain small dog got underfoot and I nearly lost it. We’re still eating leftovers. Love your banner Angie!!

Well, you got a good story out of that fiasco, and that will last longer than the turkey, anyway! Sounds like it was a lovely celebration! I remember one year when my turkey went skidding off the platter onto the floor, like it was trying to run away! I rinsed it off and served it anyway…because who eats the bottom of the turkey? Love the burlap banner! Thank you!

I’m so glad I’m not the only person who does things like this, Kathy! If my meat hadn’t been cut up, I might have rinsed it off too, but we have indoor dogs, and that cut meat was like a magnet for every piece of stray hair on the floor!